What does it actually take to bring a human protein—one never before put into a human body orally—from a shared co-working lab to a partnership with the largest food company in the world? This week, Adam sits down with Laura Katz, founder and CEO of Helaina, the company making bioidentical human bioactive proteins, starting with its first commercialized product: a replica human lactoferrin sold under the trademark EFERA.
Laura shares the whole journey. A self-described food scientist who knew at age ten that her purpose was to feed people, she cold-emailed her way into biotech with no network, no fancy school, and no idea what a venture capitalist was—collecting "hundreds of no's" along the way. From launching a lab in New York the same month COVID hit, to running over a hundred fermentation tanks at commercial scale, to publishing eleven peer-reviewed papers and running six clinical trials at once, she explains how Helena knocked through each milestone in step with its funding rounds.
We get into the science of why lactoferrin is so hard to make (an 80-kilodalton molecule packed with disulfide bridges and glycosylation), why the biotech "market adjustment" is pushing the industry toward high-value molecules over commodities, and the surprising range of applications—from infant nutrition and prenatal iron deficiency to women's health, gut and immune health, and athletic performance.
Along the way, Laura offers sharp, hard-won advice: be obsessed with the problem, not the product; do one thing right before doing anything else; skip the hype and the endless conference circuit in favor of the only two things that matter—driving revenue up and cost of goods down; and, for the next generation of food and biotech talent, show up "AI native," with a team of agents behind you.
Whether you're a founder, a food scientist, or just curious about the cutting edge of what's going into our food, this one's full of substance.
In this episode:
Why "high-value molecules" are the future of food biotech
What makes lactoferrin so valuable—and so hard to replicate
Fundraising from zero: cold emails, persistence, and getting punched in the face daily
Building an R&D and clinical engine that runs trials in-house
The Nestlé partnership and Helena's B2B ingredient platform
Why "if you can't pronounce it" is the wrong way to think about ingredients
Advice for surviving—and thriving—in a tough biotech market
Follow Laura and Helena on LinkedIn and Instagram, and learn more at Helena's website.
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